Funeral Procession
by Teh Kat in the Hat
Summary: ME2 spoilers! Shepard and crew visit the Normandy's crash site. My apologies to Dr. Chakwas for not letting her muse. Heavily implied Tali/M!Shepard. I don't even know what genre this is...


**_I can't really think of a useful preface. All I can say is I apologize for the poor formatting and for the thing in general; I wrote it on a whim and am not particularly self-confident with respect to my writing. So... enjoy? _**

* * *

><p>He had gone down by himself. Most of the crew wanted to see the famed Normandy, and Tali just wanted to go with him, but he had broken his hours-long silence to say he needed to do this alone.<p>

Snow blinded him as it rushed into the shuttle. The bitter wind combined with his sinking heart to send shivers down his spine. The Mako sat abandoned before him. It had somehow survived the catastrophic landing intact. No other sign of the engineering deck was evident.

He turned at the sound of the shuttle taking off. There it was.

The Normandy. Somehow the left side of the main deck had survived. Normandy.

His Normandy. Every mission, every success, every failure, had ended with him pausing to look at that word. His first ship. His home, his crew. All lost, so suddenly.

That was the only immediately recognizable part of the ship. Ice crunching under his boots, he headed right.

_The roof was gone. The whole CIC was open to the vacuum of space. Chairs were floating peacefully amongst the sparking wires. Subtle vibrations in the floor told him the evac pods were ejecting. All he had to do was get Joker. Then they'd escape, and once they got picked up they'd come back and fix up the Normandy. She wouldn't go down like this._

He rested a hand on one of the chairs. This was where he took his last steps on the Normandy. Hell, this was where he took his last steps ever.

Joker's chair was still in place.

_Another blast broke his grip on the wall. He couldn't reach the door. This was it. His hand caught the corner. Joker was yelling at him. Shepard looked at him one last time and hit the button. And then he was alone. Shrapnel from his ship flew around him as an explosion shot him into space. The plasma beam sliced off the CIC, and that was the end. A huge fire ball engulfed the broken remnants of the Normandy. This was the last twenty seconds of his life._

He walked the ruins in an unbelieving daze. Bending down, he almost unconsciously picked up the data pad. It was Pressly's journal. Damnit. The man had finally accepted the aliens – accepted Tali, Garrus, all of them – and then this. Shepard looked up at the ramp to the galaxy map.

_Just twenty-nine. He was a Spectre and the captain of the most advanced ship in the fleet, and he was only twenty-nine. Leaning on the railing, he stared into the map, hoping for some sudden flash of leadership. Pressly came up behind him, addressed him, and handed over a data pad. It was time to take command._

His eyes moved across the scene before him, but his mind was too full to comprehend it. Something far to his left triggered a signal deep in the back of his brain.

It was a helmet. Shepard covered the distance automatically, so many possibilities whirring through his head.

It was _his_ helmet. He collapsed on a nearby rock and, gently picking up the helmet, stared at it. This was the Shepard who had died two years ago. This was what he was. This was _him_.

_Heart pounding. Lungs straining. Not like this, not like this. So damn stupid. Not like this. Where's the leak? The Normandy, the crew, this. Can't be real. Rescue coming, just have to find… the leak…_

_This… is it…_

Two years. So much had changed… Would that Shepard be proud of him now? Life had been easier then. Destroy the Reapers, destroy the geth, go home. The decisions were so clear. And now…

He didn't cry. He was beyond that point. Grimacing in pain, he dropped the helmet and clutched his head. What was he doing? All he had ever wanted was to be a good Alliance soldier. He hadn't started out to save the galaxy. He was no hero. All he had done was what any soldier would do – try to protect the civilians. When had he really changed from an Alliance officer to a Spectre? No matter what he did, thousands, hundreds of thousands of civilians would die. A small part of him wanted to go back to the time before Spectres, and the Council, and this whole damn mess.

_He could sense the smile under her visor. She greeted him warmly, which made him smile back. When reports were done, he'd wander around the ship, catching up with his crew. It always ended with a long lesson on quarian culture. She seemed so happy, so surprised that he cared. How could he not?  
><em>

_Garrus had started off so lost. All he ever wanted was to do good, yet he was blockaded at every turn by other good people. But now he seemed confident in himself, in his values. He unabashedly credited it all to Shepard._

_He hadn't been sure about it, at first. Giving a heavily scarred krogan you had just found in C-sec custody a huge weapon did not seem like the best idea. But Wrex turned out to be a (relatively) thoughtful, caring teammate. Maybe he would go back to Tuchanka, unite the clans. At least he was thinking about it now._

It didn't ease the pain. He had never mourned the Normandy, mourned the crew, mourned _himself_. He'd been running from the moment he woke up – the moment he came back to life. His home, his life, his family had been destroyed. He had lost almost everything. He looked at the helmet again.

_Anderson had stood next to him at Jenkin's ceremony._

'_Don't dwell on it, Shepard. Yeah, it's gonna hurt, but you won't get shit done if you spend all your time worrying. Focus on the present. That's all a soldier can do. Survive today, and tomorrow, and the week after that.'_

He took the helmet with him.

While he waited for the shuttle to arrive, he looked at the twenty dog tags hanging from his clenched fist. Twenty names. Twenty crewmembers, twenty families broken, twenty lives destroyed so damn senselessly. He read the names over and over again. Those goddamn Collectors.

When he was greeted upon his return to the Normandy, he was deathly silent. Tali's gaze switched between the helmet and his expression for a moment. Then, tenderly, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her visor in the crook of his neck.

* * *

><p>Five of them had gone back to the surface. The original five. Shepard, Tali, Garrus, Dr. Chakwas, and Joker. He had insisted on being allowed to join them. When the very real possibility of broken bones was pointed out to him, he had said a colorful selection of words and repeated his demand.<p>

This time the shuttle stayed. They wanted to explore before they set the monument.

Shepard and Dr. Chakwas held up Joker. He shook them off when he neared the bridge, and walked the length of the broken hall alone. Resting his hand on the back of his old chair, he stared through it for a long time. Then he swore and jerked his head to his assistants. As they closed the distance to support him once more, he looked up through the shattered viewports.

_Shepard seemed like a nice guy. He'd never spent much time with the XO. Shepard was always fussing over Anderson, doing the hundred little things Anderson the Soldier didn't want to deal with. We'd see how Shepard did as commander. Joker was dubious, but then, he was always dubious.  
><em>

_No, no no no. Not like this, baby. Not like this. Hold together, hold together… He just had to keep her alive a bit longer, just had to get the hell out of here. Just had to escape, and they'd fix her up. She'd been through too much shit to go like this. Come on baby…_

_Shit! Come on Shepard, don't do this. You can make it, come on… I'll wait, no problem. You're worth it, man. I can see what you're thinking. Don't you __dar_e_ pull that big goddamn hero shit. Get your ass back in here, Shepard. Don't-  
><em>

_Shit. Who would have thought. That quiet, unassuming XO had turned into the savior of the galaxy. He'd saved literally __everyone. And now he's dead because of me. The Reapers are gonna come back, come back _hard_, and Shepard's dead. The trade-off wasn't worth it, Shepard. You shouldn't have saved me. I was ready to go down with her. You should have let me die.  
><em>

_Goddamn hero.  
><em>

Garrus was uncharacteristically silent as he explored. Finally, he paused and rested a hand on the Mako.

_He still wasn't comfortable around humans. Shepard, hell yes, but he was different. He wasn't human – he wasn't any race. He was just… Shepard.  
><em>

_So Garrus spent all his time fussing over the Mako. Trying to avoid the strange looks the crew gave him, trying to avoid that bitch Williams. She'd all but said she expected him to stab them all in the back and steal their valuables. How had he gotten into this again? Oh yeah, Shepard. How did he end up following some up-start human into the jaws of hell?_

_Because it was Shepard. And then he died. Once again, all his plans were shot to hell. Whenever something went right… it went so goddamn wrong._

The chairs were still in place. She'd spent some long, sleepless nights here, reading about human… everything. Culture, behavior, history. Anything to understand him.

_That voice said her name in surprise. She grinned to herself, heart picking up the beat, and turned towards Shepard. He was standing in the doorway of his cabin, a datapad in one hand and a mug in the other. He was the best of them all, at everything. He treated everyone exactly the same way, no matter who or what they were. Anyone could go to him for help, any time.  
><em>

_He sat across the table from her and asked with a concern that made her heart skip a beat why she was up so late. 'I couldn't sleep,' was all she said, and it was true. It was also true that she laid awake at night enveloped in fear, in worry. Was she being selfish for even being here? She should finish her pilgrimage, go back to the Flotilla, make her father proud. Flotilla first. …but this _was_ what was best for the Flotilla, whether they ever accepted it or not.  
><em>

_And that's what Shepard believed, too. That alone was enough for her._

_The radio silence was killing her. They were afraid to even turn on the sensors – that ship was probably still out there, looking for them. She knew he was fine, that he wouldn't die like this, but… she just wanted to hear his voice.  
><em>

_When the radios finally came on, Tali eagerly asked the operator about Shepard. Once the mandatory roll call of pods was finished, the question went out. After a minute's silence, the look the corpsman gave her broke her heart. Not like this, Shepard. No… Shepard, not like this… I didn't even say goodbye…_

They gathered silently, exchanging an unreadable expression. No one said a word as they carried the memorial on their shoulders. It was the funeral procession they'd never had.


End file.
